[wicharek]

This remark implies that the warring parties are somehow equally responsible. I do not know where the OP is (Sudan?) and know nothing about what’s going on there. But Ukraine situation is crystal clear - there is the victim and the aggressor. Representing them as as equally guilty of war is at best misleading.

[ethbr0]

No, it doesn't. It's a fair comment about external arms supply intensifying conflicts, without apportioning blame.

[kelnos]

I don't think the OP was saying what you think they were saying.

They were merely pointing out that the US and Russia are too "distracted" with Ukraine to provide arms to the warring parties in Sudan, and so hopefully the Sudanese conflict will fizzle out sooner than if the Ukraine war was not going on.

I don't believe OP was making any kind of judgment on whether or not the West supplying weapons to Ukraine is a good or bad thing, or is morally right or wrong. Just observing a possible effect on their own situation.

[aliher1911]

Wagner group (russian private military) which is now busy in Ukraine and lost quite a bit of personnel was actively involved in Sudan. I might be mistaken but they have some interests in gold mining operation which is a shared venture between Sudan and some Russian business.

[beebeepka]

Be honest with yourself and try to imagine what would happen to, say Mexico, if Russia were to stage a coup, install their guy, and deploy weapons. Cuba has been under the boot for how many decades now? Are they not victims?

The never ending "civil war" in Sudan is just one of the countless proxy conflicts between the US and Russia

The population doesn't want to be under Russia's boot, of course. Nobody does. But you're clearly playing the naivety card when you should, and do, know better

[netsharc]

> if Russia were to stage a coup, install their guy, and deploy weapons.

So... is your understanding that Russia's been "forced" to invade because the US was arming Ukraine to eventually invade Russia?

I guess this is not an original argument to get into, but do we want to agree on some basic facts before we start:

1. Putin is corrupt. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_tFSWZXKN0 . Sure the people making the video are people who want to see him be taken down and a Pro-Putin take could be that these guys are liars funded by "foreign states" to make propaganda to make Putin look bad, but there's tons of other evidence of his corruption.

2. The person ousted in the "coup" (Viktor Yanukovych) was also deeply corrupt. E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/24/rebels-toured-...

If we can agree that these 2 things are true, then I think there's an argument I can make that the Ukranian people's wish to be closer to the west is genuine and is not a Western-manufactured thing. Because the alternative is for a corrupt Ukranian leader that would've moved to be even more in bed with a corrupt Russian leader and for the citizenry to be robbed of their prosperity and welfare.

The argument that Putin did it to stop NATO's growing sphere of influence is a curious reversal of roles of the bad and good guys. Of course it's hard to argue the US/EU are the super clean good guys, hey there's corruption in these 2 institutions as well... but the way I see it, to say that Putin is the better guy against US/EU/NATO requires a lot of self-deception. Or am I the one being deluded?

[pastacacioepepe]

> So... is your understanding that Russia's been "forced" to invade because the US was arming Ukraine to eventually invade Russia?

Yes, among other things.

> Putin is corrupt

Probably true on some level, I don't know enough about it to judge it and I don't see how it makes a difference. Have you checked what the current alternatives to Putin are?

> The person ousted in the "coup" (Viktor Yanukovych) was also deeply corrupt

Yanukovych was democratically elected, so you can remove the quotes from coup. By the way Zelenskiy is also corrupt as revealed by the pandora papers[0]. I guess it's hard to do something in Ukraine without being at least a bit corrupt?

.0: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-o...

[netsharc]

> Probably true on some level, I don't know enough about it to judge it and I don't see how it makes a difference.

Hah... how to know you're not talking to a serious person. Of course it has something to do with it. Putin's been rigging elections and jailing opponents to ensure he's "democratically" in power. In reality he probably knows he's deeply unpopular because of his corruption. But hey, it's easier for you to look away and say "Probably true [...] I don't know enough about it to judge.". How convenient of you to say "let's just ignore that bit, for the benefit of my delusion, shall we?".

Why is it important whether he's corrupt or not? I've written why in my other post. If Putin was a clean president, Ukrainians probably would not have had any issues if their (also clean) president wanted to be closer to Russia. But if the corrupt Yanukovych wanted to be closer to the corrupt Putin, why do you think that is? Maybe because he would gain protection to continue to be even more corrupt. And what citizenry should tolerate being robbed from?

As to your link, it says:

> The leaked documents suggest he had – or has – a previously undisclosed stake in an offshore company, which he appears to have secretly transferred to a friend weeks before winning the presidential vote.

Huh, so he wanted to hide money that he earned before he was a politician? Hey... I don't know enough about it to judge, but that seems less terrible than using your political office for personal gain. But hey, maybe that's just me turning a blind eye, just like you're willing to turn a million blind eyes from Putin's and Yanukovych's corruption.

[beebeepka]

Please quote me saying Putin is the good guy. The entire point of my post was to challenge the very notion of good/bad actors because it's simply not a thing

I think I made it clear that of course the Ukrainians prefer the US. Almost anybody would, myself included. But not because they are "the good guys". What are we, 12?

[netsharc]

Hmm, a slippery fish, interesting.

Sure the actors aren't good/bad but are acting out of their interest.

But the whole "Imagine if Russia staged a coup in Mexico and installed their guy" sounds like you're saying the whole situation got started because some actors' interest was to expand their sphere of influence and squeeze Russia. Let's say that this is the case; sure, I would then agree, the only logical move for the actor Putin was to sooner or later confront this with a war.

I'm arguing, how do you know there was a Western-engineered coup? Got any links? To me it looks more like a population that didn't want to live under the corrupt Putin/Yanukovich regimes, an actual people's movement. Maybe there aren't any bad actors, but it sounds like you're absolving Putin from any blame, with the whole Mexico-line of thinking, you're saying (I'll assume) "he was forced to defend his country because Nato was going to crush him".

Why did Putin attack? I can imagine he deluded himself[1] into thinking that Nato/"the West" wants to conquer Russia, and engineered Ukraine into falling into Nato's sphere of influence (so Western propaganda lying to the Ukranian public, who then forced Yanukovich out). But I imagine for Putin this explanation is easier to believe than the thought that people in the Baltics and even Russia itself don't like thieving bastards, because to do that he'd have to admit his corruption is something unsavory.

And you're sort of arguing the installation of weapons means Nato was going to attack Russia, but WTF, how about Putin look at himself if he's been behaving threateningly to justify a neighbor to install weapons? Who's the one who was the aggressor who annexed Crimea? (oh no, that's another can of worms, "Putin had to do that because the West was going to cut off the Black Sea access!", right?)

[1] The legend is that he was isolating so much due to Covid, he started to develop these theories.

[yks]

> The population doesn't want to be under Russia's boot

More importantly, the population doesn't enjoy genocide and torture that comes with "being under Russia's boot". The specific goals and ways with which Russia wages this conquest makes them unequivocally "bad guys" and Americans who help Ukrainians "good guys", even if this simplicity offends your cynical tastes.

[hobo_in_library]

Hear, hear. The torture is much more palatable when it's under the boot of a US propped dictator.

[pastacacioepepe]

People unable to comprehend complexity tend to refer to complex situations as "crystal clear", "simple", "undeniable". Others try to refrain from making such comments, if not because they possess an advanced intelligence, because they want to avoid making a fool of themselves.

[potatototoo99]

Vae victis. Whoever wins the war will set the record on responsibility, like they always do.

[mrguyorama]

"Winner writes the history" is largely bullshit. 90% of the narrative about the third reich and WW2 right up until recently came from the very Nazis responsible.

[manuel_w]

I don't understand how that counters "Winner writes the history".

If the winner wouldn't write history it wouldn't be a problem to talk about

- Holodomor in Russia

- the genocide on the Armenians in Turkey.

[hot_gril]

I look at history as what the world thinks rather than just one country, and still Armenian Genocide history was a close call. Took a long time for other countries (over 100y for the US) to recognize it due to fear of retaliation, and Ottoman Empire was debatably not even a "winner."